Dark Shadows Lands Screenwriter, Begins Production in January

Earlier this year while out promoting Alice in Wonderland Johnny Depp spoke about his next Tim Burton film Dark Shadows and how he hoped it would begin shooting this year. Well, we’ve got some good news and some bad news about his aspirations. The bad news is it won’t start production in 2010, but the good news is that it will in 2011, EARLY 2011. Not only that but the film has also landed a screenwriter who’s going to hammer out a dramatic and horror-filled script.

According to Deadline, Seth Grahame-Smith the acclaimed novelist who’s known for putting “a macabre twist to literary classics and historical figures” will pen the screenplay for Dark Shadows. One of his best known works includes “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.” Yep, he thought it would be a cool idea to make one of the US Presidents a vampire slayer — awesome!

Dark Shadows is expected to begin filming in January of 2011, and is based on the Gothic themed soap opera that ran on ABC from 1966 to 1971. It reappeared briefly in the early nineties on NBC as a weekly prime time series, but the new format didn’t stick and neither did the viewers. The show was one of a kind and unlike other soaps concentrated on supernatural storylines as well as the usual long lost twin and baby switch.